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But how comes the soul not to keep that ground?
Because it has not yet escaped wholly: but there will be the time
of vision unbroken, the self hindered no longer by any hindrance
of body. Not that those hindrances beset that in us which has
veritably seen; it is the other phase of the soul that suffers
and that only when we withdraw from vision and take to knowing by
proof, by evidence, by the reasoning processes of the mental
habit. Such logic is not to be confounded with that act of ours
in the vision; it is not our reason that has seen; it is
something greater than reason, reason's Prior, as far above
reason as the very object of that thought must be.
In our self-seeing There, the self is seen as belonging to that
order, or rather we are merged into that self in us which has the
quality of that order. It is a knowing of the self restored to
its purity. No doubt we should not speak of seeing; but we cannot
help talking in dualities, seen and seer, instead of, boldly, the
achievement of unity. In this seeing, we neither hold an object
nor trace distinction; there is no two. The man is changed, no
longer himself nor self-belonging; he is merged with the Supreme,
sunken into it, one with it: centre coincides with centre, for on
this higher plane things that touch at all are one; only in
separation is there duality; by our holding away, the Supreme is
set outside. This is why the vision baffles telling; we cannot
detach the Supreme to state it; if we have seen something thus
detached we have failed of the Supreme which is to be known only
as one with ourselves.
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